No Arabic abstract
We have recently suggested [1,2] that Inflation could have started in a local minimum of the Higgs potential at field values of about $10^{15}-10^{17}$ GeV, which exists for a narrow band of values of the top quark and Higgs masses and thus gives rise to a prediction on the Higgs mass to be in the range 123-129 GeV, together with a prediction on the the top mass and the cosmological tensor-to-scalar ratio $r$. Inflation can be achieved provided there is an additional degree of freedom which allows the transition to a radiation era. In [1] we had proposed such field to be a Brans-Dicke scalar. Here we present an alternative possibility with an additional subdominant scalar very weakly coupled to the Higgs, realizing an (inverted) hybrid Inflation scenario. Interestingly, we show that such model has an additional constraint $m_H<125.3 pm 3_{th}$, where $3_{th}$ is the present theoretical uncertainty on the Standard Model RGEs. The tensor-to-scalar ratio has to be within the narrow range $10^{-4}lesssim r<0.007$, and values of the scalar spectral index compatible with the observed range can be obtained. Moreover, if we impose the model to have subplanckian field excursion, this selects a narrower range $10^{-4} lesssim r<0.001$ and an upper bound on the Higgs mass of about $m_H <124 pm 3_{th}$.
In a recently proposed Higgs-Seesaw model the observed scale of dark energy results from a metastable false vacuum energy associated with mixing of the standard model Higgs particle and a scalar associated with new physics at the GUT or Planck scale. Here we address the issue of how to ensure metastability of this state over cosmological time. We consider new tree-level operators, the presence of a thermal bath of hidden sector particles, and quantum corrections to the effective potential. We find that in the thermal scenario many additional light degrees of freedom are typically required unless coupling constants are somewhat fine-tuned. However quantum corrections arising from as few as one additional light scalar field can provide the requisite support. We also briefly consider implications of late-time vacuum decay for the perdurance of observed structures in the universe in this model.
We develop the formalism for computing gravitational corrections to vacuum decay from de Sitter space as a sub-Planckian perturbative expansion. Non-minimal coupling to gravity can be encoded in an effective potential. The Coleman bounce continuously deforms into the Hawking-Moss bounce, until they coincide for a critical value of the Hubble constant. As an application, we reconsider the decay of the electroweak Higgs vacuum during inflation. Our vacuum decay computation reproduces and improves bounds on the maximal inflationary Hubble scale previously computed through statistical techniques.
We study $R^2$-Higgs inflation in a model with two Higgs doublets. The context is the general two Higgs doublet model where the Higgs sector of the Standard Model is extended by an additional Higgs doublet. We first discuss the required inflationary dynamics in this two Higgs doublet model, which includes four scalar fields, in the covariant formalism allowing a nonminimal coupling between the Higgs-squared and the Ricci scalar $R$, as well as the $R^2$ term. We find that the parameter space favored by $R^2$-Higgs inflation requires nearly degenerate $m_mathsf{H}$, $m_A$ and $m_{mathsf{H}^pm}$, where $mathsf{H}$, $A$, and $mathsf{H}^pm$ are the extra CP even, CP odd, and charged Higgs bosons in the general two Higgs doublet model taking renormalization group evolutions of the parameters into account. Discovery of such heavy scalars at the Large Hadron Collider are possible if they are in the sub-TeV mass range. Indirect evidences may also emerge at the LHCb and Belle-II experiments, however, to probe the quasi degenerate mass spectra one would likely require future lepton colliders such as the International Linear Collider and the Future Circular Collider.
We investigate the possibility of simultaneously explaining inflation, the neutrino masses and the baryon asymmetry through extending the Standard Model by a triplet Higgs. The neutrino masses are generated by the vacuum expectation value of the triplet Higgs, while a combination of the triplet and doublet Higgs plays the role of the inflaton. Additionally, the dynamics of the triplet, and its inherent lepton number violating interactions, lead to the generation of a lepton asymmetry during inflation. The resultant baryon asymmetry, inflationary predictions and neutrino masses are consistent with current observational and experimental results.
We present a two stage hybrid inflationary scenario in non-minimal supergravity which can predict values of the tensor-to-scalar ratio of the order of few times 0.01. For the parameters considered, the underlying supersymmetric particle physics model possesses two inflationary paths, the trivial and the semi-shifted one. The trivial path is stabilized by supergravity corrections and supports a first stage of inflation with a limited number of e-foldings. The tensor-to-scalar ratio can become appreciable while the value of the scalar spectral index remains acceptable as a result of the competition between the relatively mild supergravity corrections and the strong radiative corrections to the inflationary potential. The additional number of e-foldings required for solving the puzzles of hot big bang cosmology are generated by a second stage of inflation taking place along the semi-shifted path. This is possible only because the semi-shifted path is almost perpendicular to the trivial one and, thus, not affected by the strong radiative corrections along the trivial path and also because the supergravity effects remain mild. The requirement that the running of the scalar spectral index remains acceptable limits the possible values of the tensor-to-scalar ratio not to exceed about 0.05. Our model predicts the formation of an unstable string-monopole network, which may lead to detectable gravity wave signatures in future space-based laser interferometer observations.